Kathie Larkin: Every year, nearly 400,000 women face postpartum disorders. Dealing with responsibilities that the new role of motherhood brings can be overwhelming. Knowing that you're not alone and that there are resources that can help can be a huge comfort.
Erica Lyon: Postpartum depression is a big, general word that covers an entire range of emotional experience, and so at one very mild end of the spectrum, you can have baby blues, and at the other end of the spectrum, you can have psychosis. And most of us fall more into a middle or, over here, milder category. One of the things that we teach moms and partners and dads to look for is what's normal and what's not normal. What's normal in terms of postpartum emotional experience is that you're experiencing the full range of human emotion in the course of one day. We're often blindsided by the sense of isolation, by the sense of "Wait a minute. I have my master's degree. Why can't I get this right? Why does it take me five hours to get out the door? Why isn't nursing so normal? Why do we both feel so hopeless and lost?" And you do, you learn it through the experience and through the experience of others, that connection.
Female Speaker 1: When all of the sudden the baby's on the scene, it's like, you know, you lose a lot of confidence. You feel like you're completely incompetent, taking care of, you know, bathing, diapering, you know, from the very basics to also just taking care of the relationship to getting out to the supermarket. Like, everything is so different.
Female Speaker 2: I think it was the sixth week or the fifth week, when I was first on my own, when Ken (ph) was back at work and we had no help at all, and Killian (ph) was colicky in the afternoon, so he was crying, and I was doing all the things you're supposed to do to soothe him, but he was still crying, and I just knew that, okay, it's going to last a few hours, and Ken (ph) will be home, and I'll get through it.
Female Speaker 3: There are definitely a lot of days that were very overwhelming, that felt like, "Okay, how am I going to get through today?"
Kathie Larkin: Some suggestions for dealing with postpartum depression include fresh air and exercise and a healthy, balanced diet. Additionally, research has shown omega-3 fatty acids to be extremely beneficial.
Joseph R. Hibbeln: Mothers become depleted of omega-3 fatty acids during pregnancy because of the vital importance of these essential fatty acids for the baby's brain growth and their own development. So the placenta actively draws it across from the mother's bloodstream and deposits it into the baby for the optimal development. Because our bodies cannot make these essential fatty acids, our brain composition is entirely dependent upon what we eat. And fish and seafood are the major sources. So if mothers don't eat fish, they're much more likely to become depleted of omega-3 fatty acids during pregnancy. In countries where very little seafood is eaten, the risk of postnatal depression is 50 times higher than in countries where a great deal of seafood is eaten. Clearly, not all moms who are pregnant like fish or can tolerate fish, and another great source is pre-manufactured capsules of raw fish oils or fish oils that have been concentrated.
Kathie Larkin: Another vital component in dealing with postpartum depression is surrounding yourself with a strong support system.
Erica Lyon: What we tell partners to look for in terms of the variation from that up, down, up, down spectrum is when moms get stuck. And moms get stuck either at the top, or they get stuck at the bottom, and if she's in it, she won't recognize it. When she's stuck at the top, it looks like, "I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. We're fine. I'm fine." And what that is, is it's not fine. Nobody's fine when they've just had a baby. The other place that moms get stuck is when they get stuck at the bottom, and getting stuck at the bottom is when she's crying, she feels alone, she feels like she doesn't deserve to be a mom. She feels isolated. She feels like she's having scary thoughts about the baby and that that's a really terrible thing, so she's afraid to tell anybody.
Female Speaker 3: To hear somebody actually say that they thought they really wanted to put the baby through a wall was kind of frightening to me, and in our society, they say, you know, "Leave the parents alone. Don't talk to them. Don't call them," you know. But I wish she would have talked to me, because I would have said "You need therapy. You need help. You need -- maybe you need medication. You need something."
Female Speaker 2: One thing that definitely was a lifesaver to me was to have places I could go, have people I could rely on, people I knew I could call.
Female Speaker 1: I think there's definitely moments where I felt so overwhelmed by all the various changes and helplessness, not being able to console her or not knowing what the right thing to do was, you know, feeling overwhelmed by all the books, by all the people telling you, "Oh, you should do this. You should do that," and prescribing advice for the baby. It can feel very overwhelming, but I think what really helps is having a dialogue with people who you trust, people who you feel comfortable with, who you can ask the really personal questions and that dialogue and reaching out to other experienced moms or medical professionals, you know, doulas, nurses, what have you. That dialogue is so critical.
Erica Lyon: If you can't access a class or a group like this, then you need to make it happen. You reach out to two other girlfriends, to one other girlfriend, and you say, "Hey, let's get together. Come to my house once a week. Let's meet at the park and bring snacks." You make it happen for yourself, and it doesn't have to be fancy. It doesn't have to be supervised. It can just be reaching out to a group of girlfriends. Find people with babies. Network at the playground, at the park, and once a week, get together and talk about what's going on in your life, and that creates that community. It's the best way to get information. It's the best way to get things that actually work.
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